OVERVIEW

"I'll tell you a story. My mother is 91 years old. She's a dear old lady. Now, your mother is someone you've known all your life. My relationship with my mother has become fixed over time, so I'll hear certain things said and just put it aside heard that before. Recently my youngest brother, his wife, and I accompanied my mother to Scotland. So here we were, all four of us traveling together, and I consciously started to use interview techniques I've learned as part of customer-driven product development open-ended questions, asking for explanations and expansions on specific statements, peeling away the layers of the onion. It's quite eye-opening! Because when you get down to it, a lot of things that you assumed, things you were conditioned to think, don't turn out like that at all, even with your own mother! It's only taken 60 years to get here. If you want to understand better, then pay attention to how you approach gathering all the information that you need to understand."

John Fowler, marketing process development director of CNH, in an interview about his company's portfolio process

As any professional painter can tell you, most of the work in a paint job is preparation. You need to remove old wall coverings, fill holes, smooth the surface, and apply a primer. If you don't, your gorgeous new paint job won't last.

Preparation is a huge part of creating the Value Innovation Portfolio described in this book, and a big part of that...